Tuesday, August 18, 2015

A While Ago: "On Dangerous Ground" edited by Ed Gorman, et al

A While Ago: On Dangerous Ground: stories of Western noir edited by Ed Gorman, Dave Zelterserman, Martin H. Greenberg, 2011, 9781587671920.

We were all at the Fitchburg library a few weeks ago. I cannot recall why we all went. I was specifically looking for Westerns, which are interfiled with the rest of fiction. I did a quick catalog search and this came up.

A good book but I finished reading it a couple weeks ago and do not recall very much.  All the stories were good. They all stuck to the noir tradition of bad people doing bad things. Plenty of stories with O. Henry endings. Let's take a look...apologies if I recall these incorrectly.

Hockensmth's reminded me of another story. I cannot recall what. Two crooks get drunk and plan to murder a Pinkerton. Backstabbing ensues.
Crider's has a whorehouse piano player rescuing a daughter sold by her father in a card game. She did not want rescue.
Gorman's was set in the Barbary Coast with an Native American prostitute, her violent husband, and an admirer.
Zeltersman has a farm couple pulling a robbery, committing murder during the robbery, and fleeing to Abilene. Abilene, Kansas not Abilene, Texas. Not sure which city Hamilton sings about.
TL Wolf had a drifter chancing on a cowboy job and seeing his old love and fellow con(wo)man living with the ranch owner.
I liked Healy's story of a Cavalry Lt. trying to frame his black Trooper for murder. Courtroom scene and all.
Randisi had a gambler in NYC trying to figure out who had several men murdered and he is aided in his investigation by Bat Masterson.
That's  it, I'm done leafing through the book.

Comments:
1. Is noir capitalized as a genre?
2. Zeltersman is difficult for me to spell.
3. What did O. Henry go to prison for? Embezzlement?
4. I just listened to Johnny D. Boggs's Big Fifty. Fifty has Bat Masterson as a secondary character with buffalo hunters on the TX plains. I did not know Masterson was at the Battle of Adobe Walls.

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